Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing

The Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing is a graduate program in creative writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

based at the University of Southern Maine

University of Southern Maine

The University of Southern Maine is a multi-campus public urban comprehensive university and part of the University of Maine System. USM's three primary campuses are located in Portland, Gorham, and Lewiston...

in Portland, Maine

Portland, Maine

Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...

. It enrolls approximately 100 students in four major genres: creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and popular fiction. Other areas of student interest, including literary translation, performance, writing for stage and screen, and cross-genre writing, are pursued as elective options. Students also choose one track that focuses an intensive research project in their third semester from among these categories: craft, creative collaboration, literary theory, publishing, social justice/community service, and teaching. Stonecoast is one of only two graduate creative writing programs in the country offering a degree in popular fiction. It is accredited through the New England Association of Schools and Colleges

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

The New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. is the U.S. regional accreditation association providing educational accreditation for all levels of education, from pre-kindergarten to the doctoral level, in the six-state New England region. It also provides accreditation for some...

(NEASC).

Stonecoast MFA program is a low-residency program

Low-residency program

A low-residency program is a form of education, normally at the university level, which involves some amount of distance education and brief one to two week on-campus residencies...

founded on the model pioneered by the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers

Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers

The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers is the oldest low-residency creative writing Master of Fine Arts program in the United States. Prior to the founding of this program, an MFA in creative writing was earned via standard residential graduate programs that required students to be in residence...

and other low-residency programs of the 1970s and 1980s. Ten-day residencies for students, faculty, and visiting writers are held each January and June at the Stone House in Wolfe's Neck Wood State Park on the coast near Freeport, Maine. Each semester, a group of ten students also goes to Ireland for a smaller residency. Residencies involve an intensive schedule of workshops, classes, readings, and gatherings. The rest of a student's academic work during the two-year program is pursued on a one-on-one basis under the leadership of a faculty mentor.

Founded in 2002 by Barbara Lee Hope, Ken Rosen, and Dianne Benedict, Stonecoast is one of the oldest and best-known of the second wave of low-residency graduate programs in creative writing, following on the earlier Warren Wilson, Goddard, and Bennington MFA programs. The program has received coverage in The Atlantic Monthly feature on MFA programs because of its Ireland residency and popular fiction component. Other innovative curricular features include the range of possibilities for third-semester projects and student-initiated elective workshops on special topics in writing.

Stonecoast was included in the nation's "Top Ten Low-Residency Programs" in Poets and Writers Magazine 2011 survey. It ranked #8 in the nation.

History

History:

1980 The Stonecoast Summer Writers’ Conference founded at University of Southern Maine
2002 The Stonecoast Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing is developed
2004 Poet Annie Finch
Annie Finch
Annie Finch is an American poet. She is author of numerous books of poetry as well as poetry translation, poetry anthologies and criticism, opera libretti, and poetic collaborations with visual art, music, theater, and dance. Her writings on poetry address topics including meter and prosody,...

hired as Director
2005 Stonecoast in Ireland program launched

Faculty

The Stonecoast MFA faculty has won numerous awards including Guggenheim

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

and National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

grants, Astraea

Astraea

In Greek mythology, Astræa or Astrea was a daughter of Zeus and Themis or of Eos and Astraeus. She and her mother were both personifications of justice, though Astræa was also associated with innocence and purity...

, Hugo

Hugo Award

The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...

, Lambda

Lambda Literary Award

Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...

, and Hurston/Wright Legacy awards, a Lannan Foundation Grant, the American Book Award

American Book Award

The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...

, the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

, and the Whiting Writer’s Award. Visiting and past faculty have included publishers Jonathan Galassi

Jonathan Galassi

Jonathan Galassi born in Seattle, Washington, is the President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, one of the eight major publishers in New York. He began his publishing career at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, moved to Random House in New York, and finally, to Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He...

, Kate Gale

Kate Gale

Kate Gale is an American poet, librettist, and independent publisher.- Life :Kate Gale was born in Binghamton, New York to Stephen Gale and Evadene Swanson. She graduated with a B.A. in English from Arizona State University. She received an M.A. in English with a creative writing emphasis from...

, and April Ossmann

April Ossmann

April Ossmann is an American poet, teacher, and editor. She is author of Anxious Music , and has had her poems published in many literary journals including Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, Seneca Review, Passages North, Mid-American Review, and Colorado Review, and in...

, novelists Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the Fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including Fantasy, Science Fiction and Mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales...

, Ray Gonzalez

Ray Gonzalez

Ramón González Rivera, better know by his ring name Ray González, is a Puerto Rican professional wrestler who has wrestled in Mexico, Japan, as well as with the XWF in the United States, and the World Wrestling Council along with the International Wrestling Association of Puerto Rico...

, Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones is an African American author and winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction...

, Kelly Link

Kelly Link

Kelly Link is an American editor and author of short stories. While some of her fiction falls more clearly within genre categories, many of her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism...

, and Leslea Newman

Lesléa Newman

Lesléa Newman, born in 1955 in Brooklyn, New York, is an American author and editor. She is Jewish, a feminist and openly lesbian.She has written and edited 57 books and anthologies. She has written about such topics as being a Jew, body image and eating disorders, lesbianism, gay parenting, and...

, literary scholars Christopher Ricks

Christopher Ricks

Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks, FBA is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 2004...

and Marie Borroff

Marie Borroff

Marie E. Borroff is an American poet, translator, and the Sterling Professor Emerita in English at Yale University.-Life:She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA and MA in 1946, and from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1956...

, social critic James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is an American author, social critic, public speaker, and blogger. He is best known for his books The Geography of Nowhere , a history of American suburbia and urban development, and the more recent The Long Emergency , where he argues that declining oil production is likely...

, storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, and poets Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.-Early years:...

, Marilyn Nelson

Marilyn Nelson

Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator and children's book author. She is the author or translator of twelve books and three chapbooks.-Early life:...

, Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006.-Early Life:...

, Joan Retallack

Joan Retallack

Joan Retallack is an American poet, critic, biographer, and multi-disciplinary scholar.-Life and work:Joan Retallack received her B.A. from the University of Illinois, Urbana and her M.A. from Georgetown University...

, Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.Alicia is married to the noted astronomer Jeremiah Ostriker who taught at Princeton University...

, and Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd was an American poet, born in New York City and raised in the Bronx. He died of cancer in Penascola, Florida, in 2008.-Biography:...

. Current faculty include Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali is an American poet, novelist, essayist and professor. His most recent books are The Disappearance of Seth and Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities . His honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council...

, Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Jeanne Marie Beaumont is an American poet, author of three poetry collections, most recently, Burning of the Three Fires and Curious Conduct...

, Sarah Braunstein, Jaed Muncharoen Coffin, Ted Deppe

Ted Deppe

Theodore Deppe is an American poet and professor, author of four books of poetry. His most recent collection is Orpheus on the Red Line , and he has had his poems published in many literary journals and magazines including The Kenyon Review, Harper’s Magazine, Poetry, The Southern Review,...

, Boman Desai, David Anthony Durham

David Anthony Durham

David Anthony Durham is an American novelist, author of historical fiction and fantasy.Durham's first novel, Gabriel's Story, centered on African American settlers in the American West. Walk Through Darkness followed a runaway slave during the tense times leading up to the American Civil War...

, Annie Finch

Annie Finch

Annie Finch is an American poet. She is author of numerous books of poetry as well as poetry translation, poetry anthologies and criticism, opera libretti, and poetic collaborations with visual art, music, theater, and dance. Her writings on poetry address topics including meter and prosody,...

, Aaron Hamburger

Aaron Hamburger

Aaron Hamburger is an American writer best known for his short story collection The View from Stalin's Head and novel Faith for Beginners ....

, Nancy Holder

Nancy Holder

Nancy Holder is an American writer and the author of several novels, including numerous tie-in books based on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She's also written fiction related to several other science fiction and fantasy shows, including Angel and Smallville.Holder is a four-time winner...

, Barbara Hurd, James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly is an American science fiction author who began publishing in the 1970s and remains to this day an important figure in the science fiction field....

, Michael Kimball

Michael Kimball

- Biography & Career :Michael Kimball was born February 1, 1967 in Lansing, Michigan and is the author of The Way the Family Got Away , How Much of Us There Was ; Us , and Dear Everybody . He has also published the book Words under the conceptual pseudonym Andy Devine...

, David Mura

David Mura

David Mura is a Japanese American author, poet, novelist, playwright, critic and performance artist. His most recent book is his novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire...

, Elizabeth Searle

Elizabeth Searle

Elizabeth Searle is an American novelist and short story writer. Her works have included the novel A Four Sided Bed and the short story collections My Body to You and Celebrities in Disgrace. Her new novel "Girl Held in Home" is forthcoming in October of 2011. She wrote the libretto for Tonya...

, Tim Seibles

Tim Seibles

Tim Seibles is an American poet and professor. He is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Buffalo Head Solos...

, Suzanne Strempek Shea

Suzanne Strempek Shea

Suzanne Strempek Shea, born in western Massachusetts, is the author of literary fiction, biographies and memoirs. She is the winner of the 2000 New England Book Award for Fiction...

, Patricia Smith

Patricia Smith

Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford...

, Quincy Troupe

Quincy Troupe

Quincy Thomas Troupe, Jr., , is a poet, editor, journalist-Early life:The son of Negro League baseball catcher Quincy Trouppe , Troupe Jr. attended Grambling State University on a baseball scholarship...

, Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is a Native American poet, musician, and author of ancestry. Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays. She is a member of the Muscogee Nation and...

, Charles Martin and Scott Wolven.

Alumni

Stonecoast students and alumni include creative nonfiction writers Kim Dana Kupperman and Penelope Schwartz Robinson, winner of the first Stonecoast Book Prize judged by Katha Pollitt; novelists Michaela Roessner-Herman, Colin Sargent and Alexs Pate; poets Roger Bonair-Agard

Roger Bonair-Agard

A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Roger Bonair-Agard is a poet who lives in Chicago. Bonair-Agard was a member of the 1997 Nuyorican Poets Cafe Poetry Slam team and later coached the 1998 Nuyorican Poets Cafe Poetry Slam team, which went on to win the National Poetry Slam Championship that year in...

, Beth Gylys

Beth Gylys

Beth A. Gylys is a poet and professor of English and Creative Writing at Georgia State University.Gylys grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Allegheny College with a Bachelors Degree in 1986. She went on to receive a Masters Degree from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in English...

, Jeanette Lynes, Indigo Moor and National Book Award Finalist Patricia Smith; and popular fiction writers Patrick Bagley and Laura Williams.

Sources

External links

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